Can you see me?
by natalievenom
Summary: Not everyone saved by the Winchesters is alive. What do they see when the Winchesters come calling?


I had been born in that house.

Literally.

My dad used to tell the story to my friends and my boyfriends because he knew how much it embarrassed me. He'd ruffle my hair and tell them I was too damn impatient to wait for him to find his car keys, so he'd had to deliver me in the entrance hall. Being impatient had always been a trait of mine, he said, one that had only gotten worse as I got older.

I don't know, I thought I could be pretty patient.

I patiently watched my family grow around me.

I patiently watched my cute little siblings grow into adults.

I patiently watched as the house became fuller.

Then emptier.

Then I was the only one left.

Oh so patiently I wandered the halls. The wallpaper peeled at the corners and black mould speckled what was left. The damp rose up from the foundation and seeped into the building, cold and miserable, kind of like me. Every day I waited for them to come back and find me. I just wanted someone to notice me, to say my name, to be my friend.

I only wanted my family back.

The family who moved on.

The family who forgot me.

I hated my family.

"Do you see that?" someone asked from outside the house one brisk October morning. A very bright someone, a little someone so full of hope and joy. I turned my head to peer out through the grimy glass to see who that someone might be. Her soft blonde hair was tied back in what might have been a neat pony-tail when her mother had first arranged it, but now little wisps of hair had slipped free and framed her pretty round face. Her brilliant green eyes met mine, and dumbstruck I stared back in silence.

She was _looking _at me.

"I see it, sweetheart," her mother assured her while looking in completely the wrong direction, "It's a great old house, isn't it?"

"No, Mommy! The girl," her daughter insisted, "There's a girl in the window!"

"Don't be silly," her mother coddled, "This house has been empty for years."

And it wasn't long before it was empty again.

I had only wanted to talk to the little girl, and to get to know her. But her parents didn't see it that way. Imaginary friends were cute for a while but soon adults started to get scared of that kind of thing. I wanted to talk to Sadie about my life. I just wanted her to understand what had happened to me, or at least what I remembered. But when she told them they just shrieked, and they sobbed, and then they moved out.

The next family was just the same.

And the next.

Every time they abandoned me I cried and lashed out. I just wanted to tell them to stay with me, I wanted to beg them not to leave me alone in that place. I wasn't going to force them or trap them, I was just so tired of being all by myself.

They called me a poltergeist.

A demon.

A curse.

When a new family arrived after far too long I decided I should try being patient again. I hid in the shadows, in the cupboards, under the stairs. I kept to places where they wouldn't see me except out of the corner of their eyes. I never talked to their children, never tried to sing them to sleep, never told them my story. The little girl slept in my old room. Her bed was where mine used to be, up against the wall so she could look out and pray to the stars at night before she huddled under the covers. It was rude to listen to her prayers, but I still did it. I listened and pretended that she was speaking to me. At least I could make believe that she was my friend.

On a sweet summer evening it all went wrong.

He was away on business, his wife was alone with the children. The routine was much the same. They watched television together, she helped them with their homework, and when she tucked her angels into bed she made sweet promises of angels singing to them while they slumbered. All the while I sat in the corner, knees to my chest, waiting for mother to turn in for the night so I could walk around freely.

It was past midnight when I realised something was wrong.

I sat on the stairs and looked at the notches in the front door frame where we used to measure ourselves, thinking about how my brother used to stand on his toes and cheat, when the shadows appeared through the glass. They hunched over and tinkered with the lock from the other side. What did they want? Were they here to rob the place? To abduct the children? To murder this family? A hundred grisly scenes ran through my head so fast it made me dizzy. Before I had time to think of a way to prevent any of them, the men were through. Their faces were covered with Halloween masks, and they were armed with guns. One directed the other toward the living room in a hushed voice, and then headed to the dining room.

If I still had a heart, it would have been in my throat. If the family tried to come downstairs they'd be killed. Okay, so I'd have my company, but I didn't want it like this. I rounded the corner and crept after the man in charge. He had a delicate touch, carefully rifling through the silver and laying it inside his duffel preciously. This was his meal ticket, he wanted to get as much as possible before they were discovered. If only his friend had the same consideration for the valuables of strangers. With all the grace and dignity of a drunken rhino, he knocked over family photos, smashed knick-knacks, and upturned the furniture. There was movement upstairs, and I was out of time to plan. I had to act.

When I thought about what might happen, everything went black.

Whatever I did, it must have been pretty bad. How do I know? Besides the very obvious carnage which surrounded me when I came to – _they_ arrived.

"- Well maybe it's not a malevolent spirit, I mean, it did save that family," the taller man said when he walked through the door. They didn't need to break in, they had a set of keys. I'd have pegged them for the police or FBI from the way they were speaking. Everything about them, from their confidence to their knowledge of the supernatural spoke of experience. But they weren't dressed for it. One had a beaten up leather jacket, stubble, and an air of impatience about him. The other was tall, broad shouldered and had long brown hair.

I peeked out from behind the stairs at them. They couldn't see me from there, but I could certainly see them. The shorter man was frustrated by the other's reasoning, "Yeah by killin' two guys and scaring the crap out of a couple of kids. That doesn't seem _malevolent_ to you, Sam?"

"Yeah Dean, but not towards the family," Sam replied, his nerves beginning to appear just as frayed as his companion's, "If this thing is haunting this place then wouldn't it be tearing apart the people who move in? I mean, from what I can see it just didn't like the intruders."

_You're damn right I didn't like them, _I thought to myself, _I'm not sure I like you guys all that much either. I'm not a spirit and I'm not a **thing**._

"Did it just get colder in here?" Dean asked.

Whoops.

"Whatever man, all I'm saying is we should investigate this properly and not just leap to conclusions."

Dean put his hand on the other man's chest. His expression stern, he reminded Sam, "I am _not _leaping to conclusions, okay? We saw those bodies, if those men hadn't bled to death then they'd have died of fright. There is nothing good in this house."

No, there wasn't. I might have been good once, but I didn't know what I was now. I hadn't wanted to kill anyone, I'd never wanted to hurt the people who came here. But those men had brought out something dark in me, something old, something I had been trying to hide from for a very long time. I hadn't been in control, and I had been _happy _that they'd died. Then the children had started to scream and the weight of my actions had crashed down upon me, and they'd drawn these men into my home.

"Okay, first family that lived here was in the early sixties, the Jefferson family," Sam read from a freshly printed piece of paper. Dean shone his flashlight into each corner of every room. Silently I followed them. I tried to stay out of their eye line, and I didn't touch their shadows. The name Jefferson sounded familiar.

"Anything strange happen there?" Dean asked curtly.

"Yeah," Sam showed him the page, "Emily Jefferson was seventeen when she disappeared. Says here that she was babysitting her little sisters and baby brother, by the time the parents got home all the kids were asleep in bed, but no sign of Emily."

"Any body parts or evidence of a struggle?"

"Nothing. Police questioned her boyfriend and her friends, they said they'd put it down to her being a runaway but all of her stuff was still in the house and undisturbed," Sam rolled his shoulders in a shrug, looking just as perplexed as the police officers had when they'd arrived the morning after I had disappeared.

Yes.

I was Emily Jefferson.

It wasn't long after my birthday. The trade off deal I had with my parents was a really big party in exchange for letting them have a night out of their own a few weekends later. I was happy with that, I had a lot of fun. All my friends were there, my boyfriend, his friends. I got a really long scarf, and a cute pair of earrings in shape of birds. We'd danced until early in the morning and I didn't want to sleep so my friends stayed over in my room.

We told ghost stories.

God, the irony.

I wanted to reach out and touch them, but I didn't have a lot of experience with communicating subtly with adults. It was either hurl something at them, or cause them pain. Only children were able to talk to me properly, gently, calmly. It might have been their innocence or their open mindedness, I just knew that they were able to understand me better. But I had to let them know that I was here, and that I wasn't going to hurt them. I just felt lonely, and I was lost in the dark.

"Do you hear something?" Sam asked. They both stopped in their tracks and peered around the room. The scratching they could hear was coming from the dining room. The floor was reconditioned boards, varnished but still somehow rustic. The family hadn't left any cutlery or personal items, I'd had to improvise. With a chipped fragment of an old tile I carved my name into the floor. It was crude, my hands were trembling. Not out of fear, but in hope and excitement. These men might be able to help me. They might be able to save me from this house.

Dean was first into the room. He lingered in the doorway and raised a shotgun toward the air. It was pointed well over my head, I didn't feel like I was in any danger here. He cleared his throat, "Okay, so I guess someone is listening to us."

"Yeah but is it Emily or is it whatever got her in the first place?" Sam asked.

They gave each other one of those long looks which said more than a thousand words ever could. There was an equal chance of it being either, and they weren't sure which outcome they'd prefer. I imagined Sam and Dean had seen enough of _things_ like me to last a lifetime. And an after-lifetime too, for that matter.

I was scared, but I had to talk to them. They had to know what happened.

Pushing against the veil wasn't easy, and I was out of practice. It was like trying to force against a door with three sofas and a wardrobe behind it. I focused my mind and put all of my mental strength into it. It had to have worked, because Dean turned and aimed those loaded barrels right at my face. Sam reached out and forced the weapon down, "Wait!" he ordered and squinted at me, "Emily? Emily Jefferson?"

I opened my mouth to speak but the words were lost. I couldn't just say, '_Hi, it's nice to meet you,' _and expect a friendly hand shake or a hug. For one, I wasn't sure I was solid enough to manage physical contact. For another thing, that was pathetic. I tried to smile and just nodded. Talking to boys was difficult. It'd taken me three months just to construct a coherent sentence while in the presence of the guy I eventually started dating. When the boys in question were attractive it was a million times worse. Attractive and armed? Well, that was just impossible.

I felt the air around me flicker like it was charged with static electricity. My head throbbed and nearby the doors of the cupboards started to open and close. They banged loudly in their frames and I brought my fingers up through my hair. _Calm, _I reminded myself, _I have to stay calm!_

"It's okay, we don't want to hurt you."

"We don't?" Dean asked sceptically.

"No," Sam let out an impatient breath through his nose, "We don't. We're here to help," his tone was notably kinder when he spoke to me. He might have been patronising me, but I didn't care. He said he was there to help, and that was all I wanted.

"Help," I repeated, my voice sounding a million miles away, like an echo reduced to a whisper as it exhausted itself from hours of resonating from every available surface, "Please?"

"Dean, put your gun down."

"I feel better with the gun."

Sam clenched his fingers into his palms before unfurling them again, "She's not going to hurt us, just put it down."

Stubbornly, Dean said to me, "I'm keepin' this thing loaded. You try anything, and I give you both barrels, you got that sweetheart?" I nodded, "Good. You're a smart kid."

"Emily, we know you're haunting this place for some reason. All we want to do is help you to move on. Are you okay with that?" Sam asked, "Because we need your bones, and I think you could help us find them."

My bones.

My body.

It hit me like a speeding truck. He said they'd never found me. They thought I had run away. But I had always been in this house. Not just as a ghost, but my body as well. I had been here with my family the whole time. They'd looked for me everywhere except under their own roof. They had all been close to me, but none of them had _seen _me. I was so angry at them, I was so angry that they had been so blind.

I phased again, and found myself in the hall. Sam and Dean weren't far behind, but they weren't the ones I was worried about. It was the man in my memories, the man I had met in this hall. I remembered it so vividly, that thing that bubbled away inside me, that awful memory I had tried to keep out. I remembered the man who had killed me.

I had put the babies to bed. They wanted me to read for them. I had sat on that uncomfortable floor for hours telling them about Cinderella over and over again until I had started to lose my voice. When I went downstairs he was already in the hall. We didn't lock our doors, it was a safe neighbourhood, we all knew each other.

And I knew him.

His name was Andy Sinclair. He owned the hardware store nearby. I'd grown up knowing Andy, my dad used to invite him to our barbecues in the summer, and I went to school with his daughters. They were at my party. So was Andy. He said he had to chaperone, he spent the whole time talking to my dad. When he left he gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, he'd wished me happy birthday, and told my dad I was going to break hearts when I was older.

I thought Andy was safe.

I was so wrong.

"Emily?" Sam asked from behind me.

"He – the basement – he," I stammered and pointed to the door. The basement had always been cluttered when I had lived in the house. It was full of car parts and bits of wood and sheets of metal. My dad liked to tinker with things, build things, fix things. He wasn't that good at it but it made him happy and my mom put up with the mess. Maybe that's one reason they didn't think to look down there. There were a lot of industrial cleaning materials, bleach, and things that might mask the smell.

Dean went down the stairs first. The fifth from the bottom gave a loud creak, just like it always had. I remember it creaking when I went down to help Andy find the wrench he said my dad was borrowing from him. I remember turning and he smiled, and then I was watching as he did awful things to me from outside of my own body. I had to turn away, I didn't want to see what he did with me after that.

"Here," I said once I joined them in the dark, "It was here."

"Your body?" Sam asked.

"I died," I clarified, "Andy did it. He hurt me."

"Andy is..?" Dean asked.

"The hardware store, Andy Sinclair."

Sam raised his own flashlight and cast the beam over the clutter which had been pushed back against the walls, no doubt all the previous residents had done so with the intention of moving it out later, but I'd ensured none had really stuck around long enough to go through with this plan.

"What's behind all of that?" Sam asked.

"I think I am."

The boys had enough muscle between them that they made short work of the debris. Decades of memories and mess tried to stand between them and what was left of me, but it didn't slow them down. Eventually they reached the old wooden book cases my parents had moved into the basement when they'd first bought the house. They'd probably meant to re-stain them and get them looking good as new. Starting a family had put a lot of their projects on hold. One of the pieces of furniture was a display cabinet with doors at the bottom. It would be dark in there. And cold.

I got a chill.

"You don't have to look," Sam told me.

"Yeah," I said quietly, "I do."

Looking at my own bones was – well – I didn't know what it was. Not sad, not devastating, not painful. It was kind of like seeing an old friend. There I was, not quite how I remembered myself in the flesh, but it was me. There was the thing keeping me trapped here, my prison, my physical self. And there was also my salvation, along with these two boys. These two wonderful, argumentative, and warm boys.

"Emily – you know this means you're going to have to leave," Dean reminded me. I must have been crying, or I looked incredibly sad, because he said, "It'll be better on the other side, I promise."

"Hey, is there any place you really like?" Sam asked.

"I – I liked going to the beach. My boyfriend and I used to hang out there with our friends, even when it was cold," I smiled sadly at the memory, "Why?"

"We'll take your ashes there for you," he promised, "That way no part of you will be trapped ever again."

I nodded. I liked the sound of that. I could be a part of the ocean and the sand. I could drift on the breeze and look down at that wonderful place from wherever it was I ended up after they removed my spirit from the house. They took care with removing my skeleton and placing it in the middle of the room. This was it, my final time in this house. I wouldn't see another family walk these halls, I'd never know what happened to my family, and I wouldn't get to speak to another living soul again.

"Ready?" Dean asked and flicked the lighter while Sam finished pouring chemicals and some salt over the remains. Whether I was ready or not, they were going to do it. I smiled and watched the lighter drop. As it hit them, the orange glow consumed me. I felt it, the first thing I had felt in so long besides anger and fear. It was warm, and it wrapped around me. I wasn't sure if it was just the fire or if it was something else.

Before it consumed me I looked at them. In their eyes I could see sorrow, and pity, but I also saw a kind of serenity which came from knowing that this was for the best, that they were doing the right thing for me.

"Thank you," I said with my final ounce of strength, "For seeing me."


End file.
